Should I set geogrphic target to United States in webmaster tools?

[dashesndots]

Hi, Would really appreciate some input on this.

My client www.dgatours.com is aiming primarily at United States in terms of audience as this is where predominately the clients come from.

I set the geographic target as this is a .com site to United States in google webmaster tools, is that the right thing to do or should I have left it unassigned?

I am finding it hard to see the results that I get from SEOMOZ as I am in the UK and am wondering if by setting the geographic target to the United States I am narrowing the potential search results from google.

thanks very much

Tracy

[serp360]

Hello,

Google should be able to geo-locate the site automatically by looking at citations and information contained within your website so I don't really worry too much about using the geo targetting setting in Webmaster tools.

What I would suggest that as well as building links to this site, make sure you do lots of citations too as some of the terms you are targeting, including 'london tours'' brings up local results on both Google.com and Google.co.uk.

Also, if you do a search for dga tours on google.co.uk it thinks the site is located in the USA.

If I were you I'd put the whole company address on the clients website, I would also build some citations so you can also get a local, or combined local / organic, result on the search engine results page - they should also give you rankings a boost too.

Hope this helps.

Gordon

[RyanKent]

I set the geographic target as this is a .com site to United States in google webmaster tools, is that the right thing to do or should I have left it unassigned?

Either method would lead to the same result.

The .com domain is viewed as an international domain. By default, Google will look at the IP of your host and (assuming you are hosting in the US) associate your site with the US.

The main reason you would want to use the United States setting would be if you chose to host your site outside the US, but you serviced primarily US-based customers.

[serp360]

Hi Ryan,

If the target audience are in the USA, then it seems like the sensible thing to do.

Good luck

Regards,

Gordon